One reason social media have been getting so much hype over the past few years is that they are picking up the audiences from fragmented traditional media. “Everyone’s going online,” has been the expression. And advertisers have been following them there, so far not to so much benefit, either.
In reading recently about Google’s Friend Connect it concerns me that social media may become as fragmented, or more so, than the traditional media audience of 700 cable channels and an even greater number in digital and satellite radio stations. Why? Because Friend Connect will allow any web site owner to establish their own social network on their website. And Friend Connect allows this to be done in that traditionally easy Google way via a “few snippets of code.” So, effectively, any website can have a social network.
With Friend Connect, instead of just several hundred social networks, now we can have millions. A good thing? That depends on the way you look at it. If your a marketer, trying to advertise on social networks, this is probably not something you want to hear because probably most of the Friend Connect created networks will be private or non-commercial, syphoning off visitors from the top social networking sites where advertising is currently struggling to make a buck.
However, if you’re a small businessperson looking to start your own online club, then this probably good news because through specialization you have shot at grabbing some of those MySpace and Facebook groupies for your own purposes.
Fragmentation? Yes. Good or bad? You be the judge.
